Rose snatched the paper bag out of Charlie’s hand. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “And don’t you go around talking like that, either, Charlie Hare. It could cause a lot of trouble.”
“We’ve already got a lot of trouble. We’ve got a baby dead. We’ve got a baby with its throat slit and its skin carved up. That’s what the paper said that came down from Raleigh.”
“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the paper,” Rose snapped. “And you shouldn’t believe everything Henry Holborn tells you, either, that old snake oil salesman. He’s just like one of those preachers my grandma used to go to hear, and your grandma, too, if you’re honest about it, and you know it.”
“There’s nothing to be said against the way my grandma practiced her religion,” Charlie said stiffly. “She was a good woman. She was a holy woman by the time she died. They knew how to give their lives to the Lord in those days.”
“All Henry Holborn knows how to give to is himself. He’s been stirring up trouble against that camp since the day it opened, and you know why? Because it scares the pants off the local yokels, that’s why. Half of them don’t know what a lesbian is and the other half would just as soon try it. And as soon as Henry has them all worked up, they just dump their paychecks in his lap.”
“Henry Holborn is a man of God,” Charlie said, even more stiffly. “You ought to watch yourself, Rose MacNeill. You ought to get yourself born again. The way you’re going these days, you’re going to end up in the arms of the Devil yourself.”
“You’re going to end up in the asylum,” Rose said furiously. “What’s gotten into everybody these days? People used to know better.”
“People used to worship God and obey His commandments,” Charlie said, “and now they don’t anymore. You ought to do some listening instead of talking someday, Rose. We’re living in the End Times. Henry Holborn’s been saying so for years. We’re living in the End Times and God is calling us all to choose up sides.”
Rose’s head had started to throb. “If we’re living in the End Times, I won’t need a packet of basil seeds,” she said, throwing the paper bag down on the counter in front of Charlie. “The Rapture’s likely to start and lift me up into Heaven when I’m in the middle of planting.”
“The Rapture’s not likely to lift you up anywhere,” Charlie said.
“The Rapture’s more likely to lift me up than the Devil is to appear up at Zhondra Meyer’s camp,” Rose spat out—and then she couldn’t take it anymore, she just couldn’t. She left her seeds on Charlie’s counter, turned on her high stiletto heels, and marched back onto Main Street. The air was muggy and thick with water. The street was full of strangers—not just CBS News, but all the rest of them. NBC. ABC. CNN. Writers for papers as far away as San Francisco and Portland. All of this, because of Ginny Marsh and her silly story, her evil story, her—
Rose marched back down Main Street to the big Victorian house and let herself in the side door. She could hear Kathi Nelson in the front room, waiting on a customer. The customer had a funny voice, like a tourist’s. Since there weren’t any tourists in Bellerton this time of year, Rose presumed the voice belonged to one of the media people. Rose went into the kitchen and sat down at the little table in the corner where she had her computer set up. There were people who seemed to be resisting the information age with every cell in their bodies, but Rose wasn’t one of them. She’d gotten herself on the Internet within a week of the first time she ever heard of it, and by now she didn’t know how she had ever lived without it.
“That will be twelve ninety-five,” she heard Kathi Nelson say to somebody.
Rose poked her perfectly manicured, perfectly scarlet fingernails into her high pile of dark hair. Today she had stood in Charlie Hare’s store and defended those lesbians up at that camp. That was what she had done. She had no idea why she had done it. Even right before the storm, she would have said she hated those people up there as thoroughly as she had ever hated anybody in her life. She still thought she did.
“Have a good day,” she heard Kathi Nelson call out. Rose made a face, and the little strip of cowbells on the front door tinkled.
It was better when everybody said, “Y’all come back now, hear?”—except they didn’t anymore, because ever since it had been on that commercial, everybody thought it was hick.